


It Hurts

by zouissexcam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Cutting, Depression, M/M, Self-Harm, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zouissexcam/pseuds/zouissexcam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Niall self-harms and one day Harry finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Hurts

Niall was a liar, a brilliant one to be fair. Early in their friendship Harry had learned to discount a good seventy percent of what Niall said to him. It was pathological and Niall never made any effort to stop lying. With practice Harry could easily tell what was true and what wasn’t, but he had never expected Niall’s biggest lie to be the foundation of who Harry thought Niall was.  
  
Harry thought Niall was the type of person that he had always wanted to be. He was himself. Someone who didn’t care what others thought about him. Completely carefree.  
  
Yet Niall wasn’t as happy as he claimed to be. He actually wasn’t happy at all. He was empty, a pit with no bottom. So empty that he didn’t have a personality, he could be whatever someone wanted him to e and ever since One Direction was formed, he was expected to be happy. So happy he was.  
  
He had grown up believing that if you embody a lie so well that everyone believes you it must be true. But everyday when he was by himself the smile slid off his face and he collapsed onto a couch, a chair, a bed, wondering where his feelings had gone. Wondering why he was so empty, why nothing made him happy, nothing even made him upset. What was the point of life if it couldn’t make him feel anything.  
  
Niall wasn’t suicidal though, that’s what he told himself. He figured he needed a way to start feeling again. He had stumbled upon his solution by accident. One night while making dinner he slip of finger created a cut on the palm of his hand. It hurt.  
  
 _It hurt._  
  
The knowledge sent a shock through him as his body worked to stem the flow of blood. He stood there for several minutes, just staring at the blood trickling from his hands, chanting the notion to himself over and over again.  
  
 _It hurt. I’m in pain. I can feel it.  It hurt. I’m in pain. I can feel it._  
  
He wanted to feel things. No matter the feeling Niall was positive that it had to be better than feeling nothing, feeling as if he  _was_  nothing.   
  
So he did it on purpose the next time, across his wrist, just one cut. A kitchen blade that easily cut through his skin, leaving a trail of blood that he sat and watched for what felt like eternity. It stung, and he was paranoid that someone would find out, and he was scared about what would happen and he felt in control. The feelings overwhelmed him, and the knowledge made him happy, in a way.  
  
Well, less empty.  
  
The control was a rush as well. The knowledge that management had nothing to do what was going on, that the other boys didn’t even know, that not even the fans had speculated anything was amazing. He had power over some aspect of his life.  
  
He could stop if he wanted to.   
  
He didn’t want to.  
  
As the weeks went by, they turned into months and as time passed the feeling of control grew stronger and stronger. Feeling and power, two things that Niall had never had. Now they were transferred to a pocket sized razor blade that he could easily dispose of.   
  
He was careful. His lies were well thought through. No one would ever think he was doing…well, he was hesitant to name it, but no one would ever think of it. No one, especially not Harry.  
  
But Harry didn’t have to think of it to learn about it.  
  
When he walked into the bathroom of their shared hotel room and saw the red his stomach plummeted, his eyes fixed on Niall’s bleeding wrist as Niall’s eyes fixed onto his face. He had forgotten to lock the door.  
  
In a rush, in a need to feel again he had been careless. Now everything was gone.  
  
“Niall,” Harry’s began, but stopped, unable to think of something to say.   
  
He crossed the space between the two of them and picked up Niall’s wrist, his eyes scanning the six closely spaced cuts there. Without a word he looked at the other wrist, running his fingers on the scars from a different time with the razor before letting it drop.  
  
Niall tore his eyes away from Harry, sticking his arm in the sink and letting the water run over it, smiling softly as he felt the pain of the fluid dropping onto the fresh wounds.  
  
“Why are you smiling?” Harry’s voice jolted him back to his situation and he quickly wiped the expression off his face.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“You were, Niall, why are you doing this to yourself?”  
  
Niall didn’t answer, he simply said, “I can stop whenever I want to.”  
  
Harry shook his head, “Stop lying to me, Niall. For once I want you to tell me the truth.”  
  
“I want you to drop it.”  
  
“Niall, if you don’t tell me I’ll…I’ll tell the others.”  
  
The razor blade clanged in the ground as Niall threw it down, his eyes flying to meet Harry’s as he glared, “For once I want to be in charge of my own fucking life.”  
  
“I understand, Niall but-.”  
  
“No you don’t. You don’t understand, none of you understand what the hell I’m going through. I don’t even know…I, I don’t know what’s wrong with me or when it started but I’m tired of being empty and this!” He raised his wrist to Harry, “This helps me feel again. You can’t take it away from me, Harry. I don’t know what I’ll do if I stop feeling, being empty is the worst thing ever you just, you can’t understand.”  
  
Niall’s voice tapered out as he finished his rant, his shoulders drooping as he sank to the floor, his arms hanging limply in front of him. Harry dropped to his knees, green eyes earnest.  
  
“Ni, it’s okay to cry. I’m here for you.”  
  
“I want to, Haz. I want to cry but I can’t.”   
  
Niall’s fingers twitched, aching to finish what had been started and he darted his arm out to pick up the fallen blade, slicing it deep into his arm, much deeper than any cut he had made before. Harry shouted in surprise, knocking the blade out of Niall’s hand, pushing it behind him and out of Niall’s reach.  
  
Niall stared at the wound that went down his forearm from his elbow to his wrist, “It hurts, Harry. I can feel it.”  
  
“You can feel other things, Niall. It doesn’t have to be pain,” Harry was pleading, his voice cracking as he pushed back tears of his own, “Please, stop hurting yourself. I can’t bear to see you like this. It hurts me too.”  
  
All Niall could see was the red, “But I can feel this.” He repeated his statement in a mumble.  
  
Harry grabbed his other arm, squeezing so that Niall looked up. Green eyes locked onto blue for a split second before Harry’s lips were on Niall’s. Soft at first, but pushing desperately as if fighting to keep Niall away from wherever he was threatening to waste away to. Eventually, Harry pulled back, his eyes searching Niall’s.  
  
“Did you feel that, Ni? I love you.”  
  
Niall blinked in surprise a few times and a faint smile crossed his lips, “Yes, I did feel it.”


End file.
